


amado mio (love me forever)

by inthearmsoftheocean



Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Angst, Character Death, ColdwaveWinterWeek2018, Gambling, M/M, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Threats of Violence, Violence, but not mick or len
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-06
Updated: 2018-12-06
Packaged: 2019-09-13 05:02:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,865
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16886109
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inthearmsoftheocean/pseuds/inthearmsoftheocean
Summary: It was pathetic, he knew, but in all of the chaos, Mick found he was still only able to think of Leonard.It was arguable that Len was indirectly the reason that he was in the mess in the first place, but he had also spared him from having anything chopped off in a basement in the same roundabout way, so Mick maintained that he had still come out ahead.a gilda (1946) au that takes place in the year mick and len spent apart before reuniting as captain cold and heat wave.





	amado mio (love me forever)

**Author's Note:**

> written for day two (mobsters/crime noir) of the [coldwave winter week 2018](https://coldwaveevents.tumblr.com/post/179725643283/the-votes-are-in-for-coldwave-winter-week-thank)

Whatever it was that kept Mick Rory on the straight and narrow, he insisted — if only to himself — that it had nothing to do with the cold side of his bed.

Guilt, he had also ruled that one out a long time ago. He didn’t steal from orphans or the charity box, after all, and he had never once lost a wink of sleep over a robbery back when he participated in them.  


Maybe it was a lack of direction, passion or enthusiasm, or just plain and simple laziness. No matter what it was, it had curbed his plans of putting his own gang together far from his old stomping grounds of Central City nearly a year after fleeing.  


"Hey, Rory!"  


Someone snapped their fingers in his face, earning a stinging hand for their trouble when he swatted it away.  


Small piles of cash were dropped around him, and a pair of familiar red dice were pressed into his hand. He returned his attention to the makeshift craps game, tucked away in an alley in the dead of night somewhere on the streets of Keystone City.  


"There's no way this bastard's gonna roll a seven again," someone mumbled, wise enough to try and keep his voice down but not actually succeeding. "What are the odds, right? Those bones have only got so many sevens in 'em and he’s been rolling naturals for an hour."  


Mick ignored the onlookers, weighing the dice in his hand. Crouched to one knee on the grimy asphalt, he worked them with experienced fingers, rattling them around in his fist like he was trying to plot his next move in a game of pure chance.  


The others grew restless around him, divided in whether they hoped for his fortune or his ruin depending on how they had placed their wagers. Not looking to keep them in suspense, Mick cast the dice and watched as they bounced off the brick wall and clattered to the ground.  


Seven.  


“Are you fucking kidding me?” Someone cried out behind him. “Again?”  


“You said he wouldn’t roll another seven!”  


“What do I look like, a psychic?”  


Mick smirked as he scooped up the dice and shoved them into his pocket before anyone could take too close of a look at them.  


“Quite a lucky streak you’ve had, Mr. Rory,” the dealer, who looked like a beanpole but carried himself like a brute, said as he thumbed through Mick’s winnings. It was clear to Mick that he only ran a craps game because he lacked the brains to manage a half-decent racket and the muscle to do anything legitimate.  


“My streak just ended. I think I’ll call it a night.”  


“Afraid your luck has run out?”  


A questioned just as loaded as Mick’s dice. He pocketed the cash with a tight smile on his lips. “Think I’ll let someone else have a chance.”  


“Have you ever thought of trying a casino?” The dealer asked, passing on some not-so-friendly advice. “I think it would appeal to a seasoned player such as yourself. The Santini family in Central City own a — ”  


“I don’t go to Central anymore,” Mick cut him off with a voice like steel.  


The dealer feigned surprise. “No? In that case, the place on Sixth Street has come under new management recently. Don’t recall his name, but I’ve heard he’s really cleaned it up. Worth a look.”  


Mick understood just as clearly as if he had come right out and said, “If you ever join my game again, I’ll kill you.” He nodded to the other rollers, still bickering among themselves about how they could have been hustled by a meathead like him, and turned to leave when the dealer gripped his arm.  


“Oh, one more thing,” he hissed, dropping his pleasant facade while out of earshot. “Be careful. Last I heard, they don’t let you play with your own dice.”  


Stained fingers dug into his flesh through a heather gray sleeve, but Mick felt only the faintest sensation of a man giving him a light squeeze through an oven mitt.  


_The only good thing about a third-degree burn like this is that you won’t feel a lot of pain. Most of the nerve endings from your shoulders to your wrists have been destroyed._  


Mick snatched his arm back, deciding that a pipsqueak with a third-rate craps game wasn’t worth a punch — not unless he made the mistake of ever attempting to collect the two grand Mick had won that night.  


It was a bitterly cold night and a long walk to Sixth Street, but despite what Mick had claimed before, he had a hunch that his winning streaking wasn’t over.  


A quick stop at his latest apartment and a change of clothing were in order. A clean joint meant a wealthy clientele, not a few street rats huddled on a backstreet, and that meant he had to dress to fit the part even if he didn’t exactly have the face of a tycoon.  


His well-worn henley and jeans were swiftly replaced by a dress shirt and slacks, reserved only for gala heists or fancy date nights once upon a time. They were the closest things to formal wear in Mick’s possession, still hanging in dry cleaning bags and custom-fitted at the insistence of —  


Mick shook his head to jog the memory loose and slipped into his jacket.  


The last thing he needed was tucked away in his nightstand. He sifted through a few odds and ends in the drawer before he found a standard deck of cards, printed with a red and white brocade on the back like any pack one might find at a drugstore. Mick tapped the cards out into his palm and fanned them, removing the four aces before he nudged the rest of them back into the case and stashed them again.  


The place had just reopened, the bum had said. If Mick’s hunch was correct, there was a fair chance that they hadn’t bothered to order any custom cards yet, if they intended to go through the trouble at all. If he was wrong, it was no skin off his nose, but it never hurt to be prepared.  


A passing glance in the mirror and an adjustment of his left cuff, where he had hidden the aces up his sleeve, sent him on his way. 

-

“Welcome, sir.”  


Mick paused in the doorway, giving the bouncer a once-over. “That’s it?”  


“I beg your pardon, sir?”  


“No password? No entry fee? You’re not even gonna pat me down?”  


The man’s mouth twitched, but it was clear that he was too disciplined to show any amusement. “That isn’t our policy.”  


“What if I were a cop?”  


He thought he saw the man’s eyes twinkle, but if he had, it was gone just as soon as it had come. “If you were a cop, would you have told me?”  


It was a fair enough point. Mick grunted his agreement.  


“May I take your jacket, sir?”  


Mick stalled for a moment, pretending to think it over. “You never know what bozo is gonna be digging through the coat closet while you’re on your smoke break. No, thanks.”  


Rather than defend his position or claim he didn’t smoke, as Mick expected, the bouncer simply smiled again. “Enjoy your evening, sir.”  


Distracted by the pleasant conversation with the doorman, Mick didn’t get a taste of the interior decoration until he stepped inside, but it was made immediately clear the new boss was no slouch. Wine-colored curtains and marble pillars surrounded him rather than the dark, musty basement walls he was used to. A sea of elegantly dressed people crowded around velvet-topped tables, all of them smoking and drinking and applauding and waiting for the next roll of the dice or flip of a card to decide whether their night would turn sour or come up roses.  


Mick lumbered past the craps games without a second glance, laying his sights on an empty blackjack table near the very center of the room.  


“Change, please,” he said, placing a tall wad of cash in front of the dealer.  


With the same friendly demeanor as the bouncer, she counted the bills, stuffed them into her cash box and pushed a stack of five black one-hundred dollar chips his way.  


“Welcome, sir.”  


When no other players pulled up a chair, Mick slid all five chips across the felt and made his bet.  


The dealer gave him only a momentary glance before she began to shuffle.  


“Cut.”  


The woman paused. “Pardon?”  


Mick held out his hand, palm up. “A player can ask to cut the deck whenever they want.”  


The dealer hesitated just for a moment, seeming to recall a brief aside mentioned in her training about that obscure rule, and put on a bright smile again as she handed Mick the deck.  


Mick divided the cards into two even piles, one in each hand, and barely kept the smile from his lips as he eyed the familiar red and white pattern on the back of the cards.  


“Thanks,” she chirped when he handed back the reshuffled deck.  


“My pleasure.”  


Moments later, he flipped his cards to reveal a king and an ace. Blackjack.  


“Lucky you,” the dealer said, genuinely glad for him. She passed him his winnings and he stacked them again, doubling down on his bet.  


“Cut.”  


The hands flew by quickly, and soon enough the two grand he walked in with became five with a seemingly endless supply of aces turning up in his cards.  


The dealer’s cheerful disposition became more and more serious as time went on, which didn’t escape Mick’s notice. After he had raked in nearly seven grand and cut the deck countless times, he pushed out his chair and cleared his throat.  


“Know where I can cash these in?”  


She glanced back over her shoulder and pointed toward a booth near the entrance.  


“Thanks, doll.”  


He skimmed a few black chips off the top and pressed them into her palm, hoping that the half-tip and half-bribe would buy him some time before she inevitably reported his suspicious behavior to her boss. She perked up in record time, giving Mick confidence that he would leave the place alive, intact and with all of his winnings.  


With a fistful of chips and a casual attitude, like he hadn’t just ripped the place off for thousands of dollars, Mick breezed through the casino to the cashier’s booth. He could feel the slight tension leave his body as he came closer and closer to freedom and fresh air and the idea that his rent had just been paid several times over for the month with just an hour’s work.  


He couldn’t say he was surprised when two gorillas in suits each took an elbow just a few steps from the door, but he was certainly disappointed.  


“Where do you think you’re going?” One of them growled in his ear.  


“What time is it?” Mick questioned in response.  


“Ten to midnight. What’s it to you?”  


“Oh, good. Just enough time to show your mother a night on the town before your shift ends.”  


He also couldn’t claim to be surprised to find himself tied to a chair in the boss’ office minutes later, but if he was going to end up taking a sledgehammer to the kneecaps anyway, he was at least going to amuse himself first.  


“You’re in deep shit now, Rory,” one of the punks, overconfident after taking Mick’s wallet and learning his name, taunted. He rubbed his rapidly bruising jaw where Mick had swung a wild haymaker, but Mick suspected that the injury to the man’s pride was far worse. “Just wait until you meet the boss.”  


“I think I’d rather see the girl from the blackjack table again,” Mick answered, testing the strength of the rope that fastened him to the arms of the chair. “I bet she can hit harder than you can.”  


The guard lunged for him in a rage, stopped mere inches short by a rapping on the door. His smile turned sinister, far too smug for Mick’s liking.  


“Good luck,” he sang as the two goons made their way out. “Hope you’re not too fond of having all of your fingers attached.”  


Mick’s hands clenched involuntarily.  


The door swung open behind him and heavy footsteps began to echo through the room as the boss, Mick was forced to assume, made his way across the floor.  


“I have a sneaking suspicion,” the man began in a thick European accent, “that if I were to go through the deck at your blackjack table, I would find a few too many aces.”  


“Shouldn’t cheap out with your decks,” Mick replied. “But I don’t see what your lousy cards have to do with me.”  


The furious man appeared before him in an instant. His thick beard and his almost playfully large eyes seemed at odds with the sneer on his lips, promising nothing but trouble.  


“I’m running a business here, Mr. Rory.” He took Mick’s chin in his hand in a patronizing way, forcing him to meet his gaze. “I intend for this business to be profitable. It’s difficult to turn a profit when a man walks into your establishment and tries to steal from you, do you understand?”  


Mick managed to shake himself free from the stranger’s grip, his lip twitching. “Any place that can lose five grand to a pyro with some two-bit tricks up his sleeve won’t be profitable for long.”  


“What exactly do you mean by that?” The boss asked, cocking his head to the side.  


Mick exhaled long and low through pursed lips. He had caught the man’s attention and so far avoided the bone saw or whatever else the maniac planned to use. Though he thought he would rather lose a finger than open up about his past, he wasn’t certain he would still feel that way once the boss started hacking off body parts.  


“I had a… partner,” he said, choosing his words carefully. “Taught me everything I know. I’m an amateur when it comes to con jobs compared to this guy. He’d clean you out any day of the week and you’d never even know it until he was long gone.”  


The stranger was visibly intrigued. “What became of this partner of yours?”  


Mick straightened his back and raised his chin defiantly. “I don’t talk about him.”  


The boss giggled, delighted that he had finally provoked some sort of emotional reaction out of Mick. “Oh, I see. It was personal, wasn’t it?”  


Mick refused to answer, unwilling to give the crackbrained stranger any more ammunition. Unbothered, the boss moved on.  


“You know all of your partner’s tricks, you said? Even if you are unable to perform them yourself, you would recognize them if you saw them, yes?”  


Mick raised a brow, unsure of where he was headed with that line of thought. “Sure.”  


The stranger began to pace, pondering Mick’s answer like he had said something profound. Stroking his chin between his finger and thumb, he headed toward a desk and poured a drink out of a crystal decanter.  


“What is your line, Mr. Rory?”  


“My what?”  


“What is it that you do for a living?”  


The corner of Mick’s mouth twitched into a smirk. “Rip off people like you.”  


“Your lack of self-preservation is remarkable,” the boss noted idly, turning to rest against the desk and face Mick while swirling his drink. “But you’re strong, a fighter, and you’re smart enough to almost fool my employees. That is a rare combination. A valuable one.”  


Mick scoffed. “You offering me a job?”  


To his surprise, the stranger’s answer was a simple, straightforward, “Yes.”  


Mick narrowed his eyes in suspicion, knowing it was far too good to be true. “You tied me up in your little torture basement so you could ask me to work for you?”  


“Oh, no,” the boss said. “Do not be ridiculous. When I had you dragged in here, I meant to chop off your little fingers one by one. It would have been a warning, of sorts, for any of your friends that might have imagined my casino to be an easy target. But you will be far more valuable to me in one piece.” He drummed against his glass, deep in thought. “I could hire any muscle from off the street and they would only be as loyal as what I offered to pay them. But you, you owe me a debt.”  


Mick’s gaze fell to his hands, still strapped to the arms of the chair.  


“I like it. I think you and I could get along very well once we learn to look past our differences.” With that, the stranger took a letter opener from his desk, sharpened and glistening under the dim light of the office, and walked over to Mick. After a second of consideration, he sawed through the ropes on his left hand, then his right.  


“Tomorrow evening, eight o’clock,” he said as calmly as if he were discussing hours with a typical employee, not one that he had abducted and forced into joining his team.  


Mick, still bewildered by the fact that he had found a job rather than losing a limb, rubbed his sore wrists when he was unbound. “And if I don’t want to work for you?”  


“Then you shall pay your debt with a pound of flesh instead.” Vandal beamed as he spoke, leading Mick to believe that he preferred that option.  


“Tell your henchman not to cut off the blood flow next time or I might have lost my hands anyway.”  


The stranger laughed, loud and hearty. “I will pass along the advice. Care for a drink?”  


Mick rose from the chair, skeptical as he eyed the bottle. “This isn’t some Princess Bride thing, is it? Did you build up some immunity to iocane poison?”  


“Nothing like that,” he assured him as he pressed a glass into his hand. It wasn’t the most comforting or sincere promise he had ever been given, but he was in no position to turn down a drink after the night he had.  


Tilting his head back to down the scotch in one swallow, he happened to notice a nameplate on the desk out of the corner of his eye.  


“Vandal Savage?” He asked, choking a little on the scotch that he had only just managed to swallow. “The fuck kind of name is that?”  


Vandal, so unbothered by the question that Mick imagined he must have been used to it, only smiled. “An accurate one, Mr. Rory.”  


He fished something out of his pocket and passed Mick a small bag, wrapping Mick’s fingers around it as if it contained a priceless treasure that he couldn’t risk dropping. Mick didn’t have to fiddle with it for more than a second to recognize the contents as poker chips just by touch alone.  


“Your winnings,” Vandal said, “and your first month’s salary. You’ll have the chance to actually earn them this time around.”  


After pouring both of them another drink, Vandal clinked their glasses together in a mock toast. “To new beginnings.”  


Mick mulled over his reply before he decided to say nothing at all.  


"Oh," Vandal added in the same cheerful tone, removing another item from his pocket and handing it over as well. "Your wallet. Mustn't forget that." 

Mick looked it over and could tell immediately that it had been rifled through, likely by Savage himself as well as the idiot who had passed it on to him. Mick didn't have the heart to thank him for returning it, recognizing the fact that it had been in his possession in the first place was a subtle threat. 

Vandal said nothing more, giving a flippant wave as a dismissal. Mick didn’t need to be told twice, eager to make his getaway and be out from under the ever-watching gaze of Vandal Savage.  


He made one quick stop to cash in his chips, sliding the bag across the polished ledge to the man in the booth so they could be exchanged for more money than he had seen in one place in nearly a year.  


“Wait.”  


The cashier looked at him curiously as he counted out the bills.  


“Give me one of ‘em.”  


Still not understanding but knowing better than to ask questions, the man plucked a single chip from the top of the pile and handed it over.  


Mick flipped the black chip back and forth between his fingers, unable to take his eyes off of it. Its cash value was worth far less than the reminder it would serve for however he played the role of Savage’s reluctant lackey.  


“Mr. Rory?”  


Mick looked up as the cashier pushed a small mountain of cash toward him with both hands. He opened his wallet and crammed it all inside until it overflowed, barely managing to fold it and stuff it back into his pocket.  


“We’ll see you tomorrow, Mr. Rory.”  


Mick knew the cashier was mocking him, but he knew better than to press his luck any further that night.  


The cold air on his face was refreshing when he stepped out into the night, and for the first time in several hours, he felt like he could finally breathe. He was blocks away before he came to a stop on the empty sidewalk beneath a street lamp, gasping like he had run the entire distance between Keystone and Central City.  


Vandal knew his full name, his address, everything worth knowing about him. There was no chance of running from someone like him for very long and no hope of talking him out of his servitude. Mick was confident that he could take the man in a fight any day of the week, but he didn’t stand a chance against all of the goons in his employ that would be waiting just outside the door.  


It seemed his only choice, though it was hardly much of one, was to do as Vandal said and to be grateful that he got out alive.  


He fell against a brick wall and slid down the length of it until he was seated. It was pathetic, he knew, but in all of the chaos, he found he was still only able to think of Leonard.  


_He’d be able to figure a way out of this mess._  


It was arguable that Len was indirectly the reason that he was in the mess in the first place, but he had also spared him from having anything chopped off in a basement in the same roundabout way, so Mick maintained that he had still come out ahead.  


The breath that escaped Mick’s lips plumed like smoke in the air, reminding him that he was likely to get frostbite if he sat out in the street for much longer. With a groan of resignation, he dragged himself to his feet, dusted his pants off and shoved his hands in his pockets to warm them before he began the trek toward his run-down apartment building, trying hard not to think of what awaited him when he woke the following afternoon.

**Author's Note:**

> A huge, huge thank you to Meredith (@WeBeTheCavalry), my first ever beta! I couldn't recommend her highly enough.


End file.
